The key issue of the
project "Pidzamche: places and spaces" can be formulated as follows:
what does the district of Pidzamche consist of? Obviously, this issue can be
approached in different ways and at different levels, depending on the research
subject. The analysis can focus on specific objects, buildings, and streets
forming the fabric of the area, as well as on specific people who live there
and form physical space around themselves. The whole visual landscape of the district,
as it is seen, for example, from the top of the Vysokyi Zamok, can be such a subject. Then it would be necessary to study personal
values, important for the observer, and relevant social contexts, as well as
political, social, or moral ideologies which are imposed on the visual image of
the urban landscape giving it a special meaning. In the case of this project,
the research subject is located approximately midway between these examples. It
is defined by the concept of "social space" and covers both material
objects or people and discursive contexts or personal values. In this case,
however, they are considered not independently but as elements of a conventional
material and discursive whole, represented by the existence of specific
environments. At a geographical location, there can be several "spaces-and-environments"
of this kind, and they can change over time. Thus, in a more specific
formulation, the project "Pidzamche: places and spaces" is an attempt
to answer the following question: what "social spaces" does the
district of Pidzamche consist of?

The basis
for this research is a point about a possibility to consider a space as a
social product formed by political, cultural, social, and other factors, which
places the project in a broader
context of "new" cultural geography (A Companion to Cultural Geography, 2007; Cultural
geography: Critical Concepts, 2004; Cultural Geography in Practice, 2003;
Baker, 1992, 1-14; Pred, 1990). However, in terms of methodology, the
research is based solely on theoretical works of Henri Lefebvre. Actually, it
is Lefebvre's ideas that set the agenda of cultural geography and in many ways
defined the peculiarities of its approaches. The French scholar is also an
important figure in a wider "spatial debate," which, beginning from
the late twentieth century, touched upon a lot of humanities. Lefebvre's works
influenced many prominent urbanist researchers[1],
and his points about social aspects of space are seen today as a "common
place" which does not need any special proof. Nowadays, however, a certain
revisionist trend can be observed among those who study the theory of Henri
Lefebvre, a desire to return to the source and to rethink the established
interpretation of the French thinker's ideas. According to this trend
supporters[2]
(known as the "third wave" of attention to Lefebvre), his theory has
not been adequately understood as its use by other scholars was limited to taking
some points out for their "personal needs," while broader theoretical
postulates were left without proper analysis (Space, Difference, Everyday Life,
2008). Thus, without attention to the "native context," Lefebvre's
findings were considered in an "impoverished" interpretation[3],
which was not always correct. This situation, according to representatives of
the "third wave", requires a new, more careful reading of the "father's
of the social space concept" works and suggesting new interpretations.

This
project does not involve a deep analysis of the theory of Henri Lefebvre.
However, the "revisionists'" position inspires one at least to address
the "source" because it allows avoiding political economy, postmodern
or "space-centric" interpretations of Lefebvre's ideas which are not
consistent with the approach chosen by the project author. After all, we are speaking
primarily about defining a conventional historical "space," inserted
in Pidzamche's environment for a certain period of time. Moreover, according to
the "spirit" of Lefebvre's works, various elements making these
"spaces" — economic, subjective, ideological, financial, social ones
– are treated as equivalent among themselves. The same is true for the
dimensions of time and space: when analyzing the dynamic, specific, variable
formation of the district's "face," not a certain spatial or temporal
parameter is accentuated, but both at once, as the project concerns the
district's space in the historical time perspective.

According
to Lefebvre, visible buildings and geographical landscapes are just the top of
the spatial iceberg. For humans,
material reality does not exist independently. The concept of space has to include
a vision of a broader human environment. Time and space have no universal
existence apart from the man. They are constituted by the man under certain
psychosomatic mechanisms and, therefore, depend on human perception and on its
social and material contexts. Therefore, the understanding of a spatial
environment requires an analysis of various factors. This concerns also people
who live there; their language; social roles performed by them; a variety of
everyday practices and, in general, all activities placed in a specific spatial
context. However, these are not all the moments making up our human space.
Lefebvre adds also discursive and symbolic-semantic phenomena. All these
factors are grouped by the French scholar into three principal formants or moments
of the human space creation: 1) spatial practices or perceived space (material
objects and all practices inserted in space); 2) space representations or conceived
space (discursive patterns and conceptual generalizations of space); 3)
represented or lived space (direct emotional and symbolic experience of
perception, subjective meanings). These three formants or aspects of space are considered
in dynamic and variable interconnection[4].

The
implementation of the project "Pidzamche: Places and Spaces" is based
on three main theoretical postulates, suggested by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre,
1991): 1) space is a social product and, at the same time, an important element
of social reality, a concrete space corresponds to a specific social reality;
2) the process of producing social space can be considered at three levels: the
level of material things and practices; the level of established codes, ideas,
and knowledge; the level of living everyday feeling / symbolic space; 3) social
space is "dialectical"[5],
that is, open, uncertain, variable, dynamic, contradictory, uncomplished.

In his book
"The Production of Space," Lefebvre dedicates a lot of pages to analyzing
specific historical spaces. To be more precise, he tries to propose a general
typology of spaces produced by humanity during its existence. The scholar
assumes as the basis of these generalizations the contrast between different
types of human relationships — "organic," "local" and
"abstract," "global." Accordingly, in history of social
spaces, Lefebvre sees a movement from more natural, "organic"
relationships, limited by a common residence and determined by such basic
parameters as gender, age, kinship, to more formal "abstract,"
political and institutional ones. Lefebvre links the creation of abstract space
with the advent of modern society and, especially, with capitalist production.
However, the scholar believes that the struggle of "organic" and
"abstract" spaces cannot lead to an unequivocal result, because any
social reality contains fundamental contradictions, and this concerns any
space. Therefore, according to Lefebvre, the next type of space (and the
relevant type of sociality) should be differential space, where contradictions
will be seen and manifested as differences, that is, will not bear a negative antagonistic
meaning.

At the district
of Pidzamche's micro level, such a macro scale schematization of historical
spaces would certainly have no special meaning. In our case, we are speaking
not about "universal" spaces in history of humanity, but about the
spaces of a particular district, aiming not at incorporating its situation in
the global and historical context pattern [6],
but at the delineation of locally important events. In other words, the
researcher's "look-at-Pidzamche" is fundamentally determined by a
"look-from-Pidzamche" and a relevant scale. However, certain
theoretical and methodological principles and considerations, used by Lefebvre
in his macro scheme, can be transferred onto the soil of Pidzamche. This research is an attempt to produce
its own research field, fundamentally correlated, however, with the French scholar's
approach. Thus, Lefebvre's key point is accepted, i.e. "every mode of
production has its own special space, the transition from one mode to another
entails the creation of a new space" (Lefebvre, 1991, 46). A specific
periodization of these processes, in the case of Pidzamche, can be determined
by specific moments and needs of the project.

In the context
of nineteenth-twentieth century East Europe, another point can also be used,
that of the contrast between local, "organic" aspects of constituting
space and abstract, global ones, when analyzing the introduction of modern
ideas and practices as opposed to previous, more traditional ones in Pidzamche.
Here, it is important to remember "the principle of keeping the
previous" formulated by Lefebvre: "[in] space, what came earlier
continues to support what follows. The prerequisites of a social space have an
inherent ability to persist and remain relevant in this space" (Lefebvre,
1991, 229). The "dialectical nature" of these processes enables a
change of individual elements' meaning and character: certain objects, ideas,
meanings, symbols can generate "abstract" space in one context and
"local historical" one in another. In particular, as Lefebvre often
emphasizes, the key points of a previous space tend to remain, at a
representative (lived space) level of
a new space in the form of meaningful symbols and subjective relevances
(Lefebvre, 1991, 49).

Thus, it
seems possible to use some key ideas, theoretical directions and some points of
specific historical events analysis, suggested by Lefebvre in his work
"The Production of Space," in the study of the peculiarities of the
material and ideological and symbolic environment of Pidzamche. The main
methodological problem here is to accurately formulate the subject of our research.
Lefebvre ties the phenomenon of space to the mode of production, characteristic
of certain societies, noting that "each mode of production can involve meaningful
variation forms" (Lefebvre, 1991, 31). Accordingly, in the case of this
particular study of a specific district, we can speak about some conditional
subspaces tied to significant (locally) variations of modes of production, more
global in the spatial and temporal scale. A clear delineation of these
subspaces depends on the chosen periodization of significant local forms of the
socio-political formations which influenced the district's life in any period, interesting
for our project. Proceeding from the factor of a "narrow" local
significance, the project focuses not only on subvariants of the mode of
production representing the general trend (i.e. capitalist or socialist), but
also on local alternatives, which can, within a particular place, claim an
important role and effectiveness. This refers, for example, to the coexistence of "pure" capitalist
forms of production (and everything connected with this fact) and previous
ones, such as smuggling or small craft, as it was actually in Pidzamche that
the latter retained their significance for a long time. Thus, throughout
Pidzamche, they are singled out in separate subtypes of production modes,
though, on a broader scale, some of them represent a model of sociality, typical
of that age, while others are only remnants and traces of something already irrelevant.
Also, from a global perspective, some of these subtypes can fit into different
levels (formants) of social space: capitalist forms can affect more as ideas
and discourse phenomena, while craftmanship can have influence as material
spatial practices. Within this project, this level of analysis will not be used,
though any further research in this direction and with the use of this approach
will require it. However, even at the local level of the district, these
subtypes are not completely equivalent, since belonging to a
"progressive" or to a "backward" mode of production is significant.
Therefore, for their conceptual separation, Lefebvre's narrative of the
contrast between "more organic" and "more abstract" can be
used, which also fits into the generally accepted picture of the struggle of
the "modern" and the "traditional", typical of the nineteenth-twentieth
centuries.

Also, not
only factors of material and economic nature are taken into account. This research
makes no attempt to define "classic" Lefebvre's social spaces
representing individual social realities. Therefore, here the division into
subspaces is not determined by a wider division into global, "massive"
types of production modes, where we would have three principal horizons — early
modern, capitalist, and socialist. The level of a single district urges us to choose
a different classification which would better convey local relevances.
According to the author of the project, the key to enter the research's local
level is special attention to specific semantic and narrative meanings, where
some micro differences are hidden, invisible from a more "global"
perspective, which originates primarily from difference of forms. Thus, we can
formulate a modified, "reduced" understanding of Lefebvre's spatial
triad applied to the study of local "spaces". Distinguishing three
basic elements — material objects / practices, discursive patterns / cognitive
concepts, symbolic images / personal values —​ Lefebvre emphasizes their
"dialectical" correlation. One of them, however, — material objects /
practices — is still more decisive for
him, more "productive of spaces", because it allows a more clear
distinction between social formations. The mode of production is a fundamental
factor which defines the specific framework of social practices. Nevertheless,
going down to the level of one dominant mode of production, we lose the ability
to make clear local distinctions, which are not important on a larger scale. If
we reduce the scale and still want to find some differences, we have to use
other footholds.

An appropriate
methodological hypothesis, used in this project, reads as follows: within a
territory included in a certain global mode of production, individual social
subspaces can also be distinguished, but, with this in view, the priority should
be given to different forming elements of Lefebvre's triad. Thus, we can obtain
important differences where they are not visible from the perspective of one mode
of production. In Pidzamche, for example, a specific residential townhouse,
built by a Jewish industrialist, can be an excellent model of capitalist
practices, but it also can be a symbol of the district's Jewish nature and have
important subjective interpretations inserting it into the context of
traditional Jewish Pidzamche. Or else, craftsmen's practices which acquire an
entirely different meaning in the context of capitalist or socialist
narratives. For our project, such differences can create completely different
subspaces, significant in a local perspective. Therefore, in this study specific
subspaces are defined by specific semantic, narrative or material points,
important in each specific case. That is, different semantic, narrative or
material points are seen as equivalent among themselves in their "space
productive" function if they unite around themselves the other two
complementary elements of the spatial triad.

Thus, based
on these conceptual and methodological foundations, the project
"Pidzamche: places and spaces" describes and records, through
appropriate studies, different (social) subspaces (and ties and relations
between them), significant in the territory of the district from the mid-nineteenth
century to the late twentieth century. The subspaces (hereinafter, for
convenience, referred to simply as spaces) are divided into two groups —
"traditional" and "modern." The former include the
following spaces: 1) the space of Jewish traditionality, 2) the space of craftsmanship,
3) the space of traditional commercial practices, 4) the space of
multiculturalism. The latter include: 1) the space of a modern capitalist
metropolis, 2) the space of ​a​modern nation state, 3) the space of a Soviet modern
state. Separately, some examples of the most significant cases of
"hybridization" ("Jewish capitalism," "socialist
smuggling") and "antagonism" (the antagonism of "Jewishness"
and the modern state, "Sovietness" and traditional trade) of various
spaces, as well as specific representative cases and examples (using objects or
certain situations) are considered.

It
certainly should be emphasized that the comparison of these spaces at the level
of one research field is conditional and is constructed specifically for this research
due to their local importance in the area of Pidzamche.

The
specific form and content of the study are determined by the peculiarities of a
wider project "Lviv Interactive," whose base is used. The analysis
results are presented in the form of several interactive maps with marked
objects and accompanying texts. The content of the research consists in
defining significant spaces of Pidzamche, revealing the dynamics of their
development, mutual relations and influences, correlating them with the specific objects and areas on
the map of the district.

The Thematic Scheme of the Project:

Pidzamche
as an intersection of spaces (1869-1989)

I —
TRADITIONAL SPACES

1. The space of Jewish traditionalism
2. The space of craftsmanship
3. The space of traditional commercial practices
4. The space of multiculturalism

II —
MODERN SPACES

1. The space of a modern capitalist metropolis
2. The space of a modern nation state
3. The space of a Soviet modern state

[1] The most
influential branches of
Lefebvre's theory
include that of David
Harvey, who tried to develop the ideas of the French thinker in the context of his political economic vision of urban processes, and that of Edward Soja, who used them as the base for his post modernist "ontology of space," examining new cultural
politics of identity and differences.

[3] In particular, the scope of the very perception of Lefebvre's ideas is made
problematic as attention is drawn to the fact that, though today the researcher
is, as a rule, considered to be the key figure of the "spatial turn"
in the humanities, he never highlighted in his writings the concept of space in
the conjunction of "space-time," as can be concluded judging by his
modern interpretations.

[5] This Lefebvre's term is used in this study
in a conventional sense, abstracted from specific connotations in the theory of
Lefebvre, where the concept of dialectics conveys his fundamental views on social
reality.

[6] Although such a probable study of, for
example, the industrialization of Pidzamche in the context of the development
of a new order of "abstract space," according to Lefebvre, would be
certainly very interesting.